Oak Banister Makeover | Gel Stain With No Stripping

Hello fans, you are quite distraught. I'm Christina, welcome back to my channel. If you're new to my channel and like what you see, please subscribe or give me a thumbs up today. I'm doing something a little different. I won't work with the track. paint or furniture I'm going to redo my railing. This is a project I've wanted to do since we moved about four and a half years ago. We redid our floors when we moved in so we have hardwood throughout this floor and it's like a walnut color so it doesn't really match the honey oak railing, we have the sturdy railing and it's in pretty good condition so I couldn't justify the complete replacement, especially for what it cost, so I just wanted to update it with a little

stain

and some latex paint.

I've used gel

stain

for general finishes before and I know that you can use it directly on the finished surface and you don't have to strip or sand, which I was very excited about while researching what I wanted to do to my railing. I couldn't really find the right tutorial for what I wanted to do so I decided I would make a tutorial for you and my process went well. I already completed most of my railing. I have a second story for you and I have a runway here. I learned a lot of things along the way so I wanted to share that with you and luckily I saved this little section at the bottom of my stairs so I could make a step by step tutorial for you.

Today we'll update this with some gel stain and some latex paint, so let's get started. All of these items can be found at your local Home Depot or Lowe's hardware store, if you don't fancy going to the store I will link everything below in the description box to Amazon. Please note that if you purchase these, these are affiliate links and if you are quite distressed, I will get a small commission for anything. Whatever you buy, the first thing we want to do is clean the railing, so for any piece that has stain applied to it, I'm going to use this mineral spirits to clean that section.

I don't want to use this in the sections where latex paint will be used, we will use this denatured alcohol, water with a 50% reduction and we will put it in a spray bottle, these are scotch pads or final stripper pads, we will apply either mineral spirits or denatured alcohol to these and clean the corresponding parts of our handrail these blue gloves are nitrile gloves. I hope I said it right, I prefer these to latex, they are a little stronger and break as easily as you will need them to protect your hands from these chemicals that we are using and then we will also use them when we dye, so make sure you get a big box, so here I am taking the mineral spirits and applying them directly to my sketch pad.

I don't recommend you do this because I actually spilled it all over the floor and made a big mess. The best idea is to get a stainless steel container, put some mineral spirits in there and dip the sponge in there for the next one. What you are going to do is very easy, just rub this up and down on the parts you are going to dye as you can see it is dripping all over the floor so make sure you cover the floor and carpet with protective cover before To get started, this is very important for the dye to adhere properly as you can see there is a lot of yucky stuff in there so don't skip this step.

Okay, now we move on to the part that I'm going to paint with latex, so I'm going to take water with 50% denatured alcohol in my spray bottle, I sprayed it directly on a cloth and I'm cleaning that whole section here as you can see, this one is also very dirty, so make sure you clean it. The reason we use denatured alcohol instead of mineral spirits is because mineral spirits and water-based paints don't work well together, so I just want to make sure everything adheres to the best capacity. Why am I using two different products here? So while it's drying, I'll go ahead and tape down all the areas I want to protect from my stain.

My dye is an oil-based dye, so it's highly pigmented and I do it. I don't want it to get stained on anything because once it gets stained it's very hard to remove, so make sure you put the tape on to protect everything. You should also make sure again to protect your carpet and its fluoride. under the railing at this point, we don't really have to worry about any stain getting on parts of the railing that we don't want because we'll be covering them with primer and latex paint, so don't do that. go crazy and be super sloppy, but you don't have to tape the axles under the railing.

Next we are going to want to make any repairs or fill any nail holes that you may have in your railing so just grab some basic wood putty and a putty knife and just fill in all those holes and then let it dry check the drying time on the can of your wood filler once it's all dry you can go ahead and sand it. I'm using a 220 sanding pad just to smooth everything out and get it. ready to be done, sorry for this crazy lighting change, the sun started setting over me right now, what I'm doing is removing all the dust that we created by sanding, so I'm just using a paper towel to remove the dust, You could use a sticky cloth or something, just remove all that residue to get a clean surface.

Okay, so the last prep step before we start staining is we're going to take the sanding pad that I just used and we're going to give the wood a light massage. We're definitely not going to remove any finish, we're just scraping it off a little bit to give the stain something to adhere to and finally you're going to take that damp paper towel or technical cloth and just wipe any remaining dust off the railing before get the stain out, we're finally ready to start staining, so here I am opening my can of an overall finishing gel stain.

It is antique walnut color. They have a variety of shades. Java gel is their most popular color, I think it is a bit. darker, but again I'm trying to match it with my floor, so I selected antique walnut. It is a very thick gel-based oil-based dye, so make sure you wear gloves and give it a good stir beforehand. you start applying it the items I'm going to need to dye are these paint rags that I bought at Menards they're really interesting they don't leave lint which is the key they almost feel like a paper towel they're all dry but they're actually cloth once that you wet them very, very cold and I'm going to use this applicator, it's just a foam brush.

These are like 79 cents at the hardware store, so I'll take my foam brush and dip it in. in my gel stain and I'm going to take that lint free cloth and I'm actually going to turn this into a polishing pad so what I'm doing is I'm putting a little bit of product in here as you can see just painting it by getting that fabric It is very wet and you will see what I am going to use it for in that second well in which I am diving. I've dipped my foam applicator into my gel stain again and I'm just painting that on.

I'm going to paint this on the railing as well as the newel post and balusters. I'll leave it for latex painting later, so again I'm going to apply a good coat from top to bottom. Here you want the dye to set a little. before you start cleaning it up, so make sure you take this in sections where you can apply this stain very thickly and leave it almost like a painting. I don't like that look, so what I'm doing is polishing pad and cleaning most of this stain. I'm using a very light hand and since I have a stain on my rag, it's actually pushing some of that stain into the grain when you do this, you want to make sure that you go with the grain of the wood so it doesn't get weird and scratchy and make sure you don't have any big stains just rub it really well with a light hand so now I'm just zooming in on you. a little closer doing exactly the same thing I did on the handrail.

I've sped up this process a bit so this video doesn't end up being 30 minutes long, obviously take your time and be as methodical as you want. This process takes a while to master, so I recommend starting in an area that isn't seen much and working your way up to the most seen area of ​​the railing on this first day of staining. If you're going to stain under the railing, you're just going to have to apply one coat down here, we just want it to match everything, but you really don't have to put a lot of stress down here, just make sure you do this the first day we use it.

We'll let this dry for 24 hours before doing more coats. I ended up doing three layers on this piece just to match what I had done above. If you like how it looks after one or two coats, don't hesitate to stop. It's really up to you how deep you want the stain, the process will be exactly the same for each additional coat, so just follow all the steps we went over on day one, just a little side note, make sure you dry these applicators. and recks every day outside before you throw them here. I'm doing one last tight shot for you in real time so you can get an idea of ​​how this is going.

This is my last layer. I put on my third layer so you can see. how this process here will deepen this so now I've achieved the color I want with the stain after three coats so I'm going to let it dry again for 24 hours and then I'll start prepping the railing for the primer and paint so in At this point I want to protect any pieces of the railing that I don't want covered with paint or primer, so I'm going to tape under the handrails on the spindles or balusters and I'm also going to tape the wall to make sure so that there's no white paint on my wall and I'm also going to protect it with the newel posts, so again, just cover any of those sections of wood that you don't want white paint on.

This is the 3m Scottish Blue Pre-Etched Painters Plastic. It is not a sponsored article. I just wanted to try it. This product is not necessary, but I saw it in the store and it really caught my attention, so I'm trying it out. What we put out today is actually a painter's tape and a drop cloth and one, so you just paint and put the painter's tape on like you normally would and then you can pull out this really nice, big, so awesome drop cloth to print today. I'm going to use this Zinser target for an all-purpose primer and sealer and I'm going to use this shortcut angled frame brush from Worcester.

It is the best brush to place between the axles. A long handle will really get in the way. The reason I selected this primer is that it is a water based primer so it makes the brushes very easy to clean, it also blocks stains and the best part is that it sticks to any surface without sanding, it doesn't There is a special way to apply it. You will simply paint it like you would latex. I recommend following the grain because it makes things a little easier and will hide some of your brush strokes. You will still be able to see some wood, so don't do it.

I don't think this is going to completely cover the wood underneath. I just applied one coat of primer, you can do that. I'm a little lazy, so that's why I made one just to make things easier. Make sure you don't have any big blobs or drip marks so they don't have to sit there later when it dries. This is ready for top coat after 1 hour of drying for top coat. I'm going to use Sherwin. Williams Pro Classic Interior Acrylic. It is water based so again easier to clean. I keep it on hand because it's what we use to paint our trim.

It is a high-performance coating, it does not yellow and resists a lot of wear. It rips so it's perfect for a railing and the best part is that this formula applies smoothly with no brush marks. You can also tint this paint any color you want. I like a very bright white, so I didn't actually dye it at all. I did it. Two coats and I was happy with the coverage. You are more than welcome to apply as many as you want to get the coverage you want. Next I'm going to use a top coat on the stained parts of my railing.

I will use the high performance top and flat coat of this overall finish. It is water based, so it is easy to clean. It looks a little milky. All you have to do is stir it up and then you can start applying it with a foam brush. you'll just dip your foam brush directly into the can and apply this in a very thin layer, it's milky white and consistency but then it dries very light and flat, just make sure you don't do that when you're going on. If you have very visible drip marks or white bubbly spots, you don't want to work on this too much, so when you put it on an area, just smooth it out and then move on and don't try to fix it again. in a couple of minutes because it will have already hardened and you will make a big mess.

You can do this step right after finishing dyeing. The only reason I painted before adding my top coat is because I did the top coat all at once, so I did the walkway on top of my railing as well as this little section all at the same time. The general finish recommends doing three coatsof this top layer or more. I made three on my very used one. areas and then in areas that I know where people are not going to use the handrail on the walkway as much. I only did two general finishes. I also recommend sanding between coats with a very fine sandpaper like a 400.

I tried doing this and I started scratching the stain and removing some of it, which I wasn't happy about so I decided not to stain between coats. I don't know if that will affect the wear, but again it's up to you if you want to stay in between coats or not, and here's a little tip between coats. Save this foam brush and simply stick it in a ziploc bag, squeeze out all the air and you can reuse and reuse it until you're done. Drying time for this top coat is two to four hours if it's a little colder.

I'm going to want to wait eight to ten hours to recoat it, so here's just one more shot of me applying my last and third layer of top coat, as you see it goes on very wet and shiny, but dries very flat . end that I really like, so this project is finally complete, from this honey oak railing to a two-tone beauty. I am very happy with the result. I want to warn you that this project is not for the faint of heart. You need to enjoy painting and you really need to take your time and be methodical, it's not something you can achieve in a couple of days.

In fact, I think it took me about two months to complete this. but I'm a stay at home mom with kids so they might be able to figure it out a little quicker but I just want them to have realistic expectations. Thanks for watching this video all the time. Until the end, if you liked it, give me a thumbs up, don't forget to subscribe before you leave and you can always watch the pretty distressed calm to see more of my work. I'll see you next time.